Japan has been grappling with its demographic statistics with a sense of urgency, particularly regarding its declining birth rate. In 2023, the country...
  • Skyrmir@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1263·
    1 day ago

    Decent first step, but it’s going to take an actual investment in making parenthood desirable.

    • cRazi_man@lemm.ee
      808·
      1 day ago

      Parenthood is already desirable. There’s a biological drive and social conditioning to desire it for most people. The disincentives have just become overwhelming. Children take a hell of a lot of resources. Every aspect of modern society has drained all the time, money, energy, emotional resiliance, social support, etc that people need.

  • WalnutLum@lemmy.ml
    106·
    1 day ago

    Daycare/Kindergarten is already free across the country for all children starting at 3 years old.

    All child healthcare is also free after a prefecture-set monthly premium (usually about 1000 yen).

    This policy announcement is specifically about making the 0-3 year old gap free.

    Honestly I’d rather just see the government pay more into the shakai hoken (the national insurance that pays for mother/father leave) so people can take more time off from work early on in the kids’ lives.

    Making it easier for parents to go back to work instead of focusing what’s good for children and parents seems par for the course.

    • kinetic_donor@lemmy.zip
      10·
      18 hours ago

      Daycare/Kindergarten is already free across the country for all children starting at 3 years old.

      My information might be biased towards the greater Kanto area (Tokyo/Yokohama), but I’m not aware of anybody paying less then 20000 Yen (a little over $100 USD I guess) per month per child for a place in a public daycare (can be more than double, depending on the area/daycare, and much more for private ones).

      It’s much more complicated, though. You can receive various support money from the state/prefecture/city, but it’s usually less than what you have to pay. And you’re not guaranteed a place, and the waiting list cam be long (especially in highly populated areas in Tokyo).

      • WalnutLum@lemmy.ml
        6·
        17 hours ago

        I’m not sure why your friends are paying that… Most cities in Saitama, Chiba, and the 23 wards at least I know that the 学費 was set as 無償化.

        There are some instances where you don’t qualify for free school if you make too much money. (Or it could just be they didn’t have a good guide at the city office to walk them through the maze of beaurocracy)

        Also 23 wards and most of the cities in Saitama and Chiba have daycare and kindergarten entry that’s points based(the larger cities have more kids than daycare spots, which is my favorite bit of irony about the Japanese birthrate problems), the more points you have (points based on need, like are you a single mother, both parents working full time etc.)

    • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
      174·
      20 hours ago

      The only solution is to make childcare paid i.e. every single person that has a child gets a stipend worth a full time job.

      Because it is a full time job.

    • deaf_fish@lemm.ee
      2·
      17 hours ago

      Hmm sarcastic or not sarcastic… This is a hard one. I’m going to guess sarcastic.

      • jagged_circle@feddit.nlEnglish
        21·
        14 hours ago

        Not good to make assumptions. Better to Downvote and report. Even if you guess right, some bigot may think it validates their hatred.

    • Fisch@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      191·
      15 hours ago

      Capitalism is totally different from a ponzi scheme. In a ponzi scheme, the profits go up to the person at the top and you always need new people that come in, otherwise the whole thing will fall apart and the people at the bottom will be the ones that suffer. Under capitalism however, the profits of everyone’s work will go up to the top and you always need new workers to come in, otherwise the system will fall apart and the people at the bottom will suffer. Totally different.

          • qaz@lemmy.worldEnglish
            0·
            10 hours ago

            I think it actually fits quite well.

            A Ponzi scheme is a form of fraud that lures investors and pays profits to earlier investors with funds from more recent investors.

            Meanwhile, the current pension system in most countries depend on a growing population to spread out the payments for pensioners over multiple workers.

            Ponzi schemes collapse when there aren’t enough investors to sustain the dividends to be paid to the existing investors. Most countries’ pensions rely on an increasing amount of working age inhabitants to pay retirees and are now having issues paying out pensions due to the shift in demographics, that’s why many countries have been increasing the retirement age recently.

            There are 2 solutions to this.

            1. Increasing birth rates, this option is not sustainable in the long term but is commonly preferred for reasons mentioned below.
            2. Migration. There are currently plenty of countries with a large working-age population and a weak economy. Letting those migrate would solve the demographic issue, but is political suicide.
            • LandedGentry@lemmy.zipEnglish
              2·
              8 hours ago

              This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how these funds work.

              The goal is not to pay people with the money from new people paying into the pot. They invest the money and then the pot grows and that money is used to pay out. When the pot is not growing enough - whether because investments aren’t doing well enough, or you designed a you designed an bad system where people can withdraw from it for too long, or any other many possible issues - then yes you functionally end up dipping into the money given by new people, but this is not how it was designed to be used.

              You are acting like this is a one-to-one system where you just put money in, then you get money out later, and all of the money given out is 100% the money that people put in in the first place with no intention of growing that money or finding a sustainable way of disseminating it long-term.

              Mismanagement/poorly built systems are not the same as Ponzi schemes. Unless you think, I don’t know, US Social Security is also a Ponzi scheme?

              • qaz@lemmy.worldEnglish
                1·
                8 hours ago

                Of course I understand that the money that is put in is invested, but that doesn’t mean the problem goes away when the system relies on the “pot” growing at a certain rate.

                EDIT:

                Mismanagement/poorly built systems are not the same as Ponzi schemes. Unless you think, I don’t know, US Social Security is also a Ponzi scheme?

                I’m not implying that it’s the same, just that the comparison fits better than you might expect.

                • LandedGentry@lemmy.zipEnglish
                  1·
                  8 hours ago

                  When did I ever say the problem goes away? I am saying it is not a Ponzi scheme. You were saying it is a Ponzi scheme. Don’t move the goalposts here.

  • geography082@lemm.ee
    4·
    1 day ago

    Considering the situation they should mave life care, no one wants to have babies there. Raise by social entities

    • geography082@lemm.ee
      31·
      1 day ago

      Considering the situation in this country, the government should have gone a step further and implemented a live care system (LIVE care), where children are raised by specialized care organizations.

    • Sc00ter@lemm.ee
      15·
      1 day ago

      Childcare is outrageous. Daycare for my two kids was more than my mortgage every month. Ive been counting down until they were eligible for public schools

      • AFaithfulNihilist@lemmy.world
        8·
        1 day ago

        Unfortunately for many of us Americans, there is a substantial contingent of our government that would really like to do away with public schools.

      • Evotech@lemmy.world
        3·
        1 day ago

        Damn, in Norway is not free, but both public and private kindergartens (1-6) are capped in terms of what they can bill for each month. Which is about 210usd

        The rest is paid for though taxes obviously.

    • Zetta@mander.xyz
      83·
      14 hours ago

      Why are you of that opinion? Something like 30% of Japan’s population is over 65. Low birth rates are obviously not sustainable for them and will have extreme issues for their country if it continues.

        • Zetta@mander.xyz
          1·
          11 hours ago

          “Has almost made the planet uninhabitable” The Earth is definitely worse off since we have proliferated, but this is such a clickbaity untrue statement.

          Humanity has and will continue to cause changes to the world that are negative, I agree, and that sucks. But like it or not, humanity is good at adapting and surviving, and we will be fine, even with the worldwide population overall continuing to grow for a very long time into the future.

          • jagged_circle@feddit.nlEnglish
            1·
            9 hours ago

            This isn’t just about humans. We’re in a mass extinction period caused by humans. We need to lower our population to save other species

          • surph_ninja@lemmy.world
            1·
            6 hours ago

            LoL. You think we’re gonna grow gills or something? How do you think we’ll adapt to food chain collapse?

            I’m sure that life will adapt in some form, but most life in the history of this planet has not been human. And we would not be this planet’s first mass extinction event.

        • boonhet@lemm.ee
          2·
          12 hours ago

          It’s not obvious. Low birth rates are completely sustainable, you just kill anyone who can’t afford to retire and can’t work anymore, and society functions perfectly well.

            • boonhet@lemm.ee
              1·
              8 hours ago

              We also consume bullshit at 100 times the rate. People will be unhappy to see that go away. But yes, we produce more than enough for everyone as is.

        • lepinkainen@lemmy.world
          2·
          12 hours ago

          Old people can’t work and need someone to pay for their retirement.

          If there are more old people than young people (population pyramid wrong way round) every young person needs to pay a crapton of taxes so that old folks don’t starve to death

        • Zetta@mander.xyz
          1·
          11 hours ago

          The two biggest issues off the top of my head are rural towns in Japan will continue to lose population and completely disappear, and there won’t be enough young working people paying into health care and social funds to support the old non-working population. I think there are a lot of other major negative impacts Japan will face as a country but I’m just not that knowledgable on the subject.

          I assume we just have fundamentally different views on this topic because I really wish humanity would change to a more scientific and explorative approach entirely, where we expand outward into space and become a multi-planetary species, which will need a huge sustained population growth to support. I assume you don’t support that.

          • Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world
            2·
            9 hours ago

            We need to inhabit at least one other plant on a continuous basis before we encourage exponential population growth.

            We are going to be resource constrained on this planet long before we expand to others.

      • I_am_10_squirrels@beehaw.org
        3·
        14 hours ago

        Infinite growth is unsustainable. A decreasing population will accelerate the collapse of capitalism, when the capitalists run out of cogs.

        • Zetta@mander.xyz
          1·
          11 hours ago

          I just disagree on the infinite growth being unsustainable thing. Humanity, in my opinion, is destined to expand to the stars where we will continue to grow Indefinitely on a time scale that actually matters to you and me.

          Obviously, that could not happen if we somehow all die, but despite all the doom and gloom, I really don’t think that’s likely.

      • Daemon Silverstein@thelemmy.club
        21·
        12 hours ago

        So the solution is to rip off souls from the non-existence aether, bring them to this ever-bizarre world in order to condemn them, like Sisyphus, to a lifetime pushing of a social boulder which is fated to always go downhill? (In other words, why the unborn should sustain the faults of an unsustainable society that weren’t their faults to begin with?)

        • Zetta@mander.xyz
          1·
          11 hours ago

          “Unsustainable Society” No matter your opinion on current governments, humanity has been around for an awful long time, and it will likely continue to be around for significantly longer into the future of the universe. In my opinion, that’s pretty cool.

          In the grand scheme of things, just looking back over the past couple hundred years, the vast majority of humanity is in a better spot than we were, no matter how bad things may seem on a small time scale.

          • Daemon Silverstein@thelemmy.club
            1·
            11 hours ago

            Yeah, global climate, carbon dioxide levels and even biodiversity are in a better spot nowadays than they were before, huh? That’s pretty cool! /s

            • Zetta@mander.xyz
              1·
              11 hours ago

              You definitely are right some things are worse, but I more so meant quality of life in almost every single aspect for people that are alive. No shit, there are atrocities across the world still and things locally suck in many ways to varying degrees for a significant portion of the population in the world. Either way you can’t argue I’m good faith that the average humans quality of life hasn’t gotten exponentially better over the past thousand years. And I think that trend will continue into the next thousand years.

      • WalnutLum@lemmy.ml
        9·
        1 day ago

        Usually the newer buildings owned by larger real estate groups don’t do they kept money thing anymore.

        I’ve only really seen it in buildings owned by small real estate concerns and old dudes.

        It’s luckily getting kind of pushed out as a normal thing, just slowly.

      • MutilationWave@lemmy.world
        61·
        1 day ago

        Only once in my life have I got my damage deposit back. That is tipping the landlord a lot of money. The time I got it back was in a terrible situation and I had leverage over the parasite.

    • kalleboo@lemmy.world
      18·
      1 day ago

      Housing is pretty affordable in Japan since housing in Japan is not an investment, it depreciates like a car (only the land has value, the house ontop of it has literally negative value since it’s assumed anyone will want to bulldoze it), and their lax zoning allows for continual densification to happen.

    • regul@lemm.ee
      27·
      1 day ago

      Housing in Tokyo is known for being relatively affordable, actually.

      • bountygiver [any]@lemmy.mlEnglish
        29·
        1 day ago

        ya it’s funny when you watch some videos about “small apartments” in tokyo and only to realize they are still more cheaper and spacious than some NA options in big cities.

      • WalnutLum@lemmy.ml
        12·
        1 day ago

        Not in Tokyo, but farther out in Tokyo’s residential cities (outside the 23 wards like Chiba and Saitama)

        It’s even cheaper the farther you get from train stations. There’s a 30 minute walk “cliff” where residential land prices plummet when you’re more than 30 minutes walk away from a train station.

  • A_Filthy_Weeaboo@lemmy.world
    22·
    14 hours ago

    Also…loosen immigration laws?

    I know it’s a very closed off nation with deep cultural roots that is very weary of outsiders…